When the insomnia started to get bad, I determined, to my surprise and to my doctor’s, that significant physical activity tended to make matters worse: all the endorphins and none of the fatigue. This finding suggested that I should confine the yard work to Friday and Saturday, since I don’t have to get up at six the next day.

Then Thursday evening presented me with 75-degree weather and a front lawn that had grown rather a lot in six days, so I decided to risk it. The results were Not Awful, and gleeful at the prospect of not having to do any of this stuff on a Saturday, I finished my ten-hour work day Friday and attacked the back yard, which is way larger.

Sore, though not especially tired, I betook myself to bed about a quarter to ten, and stayed there eleven and a half hours. And judging by the condition of the bed this morning, it was a rough night indeed. No fewer than three narratives were played out in dreams:

Cher, of all people, had consented to appear in an online centerfold, on the condition that the photo be impossible to reproduce elsewhere on the Net. I was attempting to do exactly that, and failing: the handy Save As command didn’t work, since the filename kept changing randomly, and none of my graphics tools could get a grip on the file.

I was attending a session at a Guatemalan bingo hall, hosted by someone who looked a lot like Wink Martindale. I had no problem with the processional, during which we were blindfolded; however, those who wanted a place in the competition area were asked to surrender their shoes temporarily, and I never got mine back for some reason. While searching in the coat-check room, I managed to pull down a set of blinds, and discovered some very un-Bingo-like materials: I’ve played this game before, and no one has ever called out “C-4.”

A desperately-ill child has undergone an amazing synthesis: the body was allowed to die, and the consciousness was somehow uploaded into a device the size of a Treo. Which wouldn’t be a problem, exactly, except that someone has infected the poor kid with some sort of virus, and Venomous Kate and I are searching the backwoods of northern Missouri for clues to the identity of the perpretrator.